I am deep into you – Into the heat, Into the humidity. Into the weeds that are not the same weeds that grow in May or June or July.
August, You have weeds of your own – weeds that grow tall with plumes. Plumes that want plucked and dried for a fall arrangement that might be made in September. Weeds that take over the yard and garden when weeding is late, when mowing is late, when the gardener is late to gardening.
August, You came too soon, will leave too soon, taking summer with you and the days for doing outdoors what needs to be done outdoors. August, You are a thief, taking what’s needed from the person who needs it.
August. There are many days between now and the next one. Many days in September and October when a gardener can play catch up, tidying things that needed tidying in April and May and June and July. Rooting plants that need rooted. Potting plants that need potted. Planting plants that need planted. Doing outdoor things while time allows outdoor things to be done.
August, There are still a few days of you left. Those days will grow shorter, but, maybe not cooler. Right now, just past the middle of you, I am deep into the depth you. And it’s hot, and it’s humid, and there is still much to do – Much to do for a gardener who came late to the garden.
"August rushes by like
desert rainfall,
A flood of frenzied upheaval,
Expected,
But still catching me unprepared.
Like a match flame
Bursting on the scene,
Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.
Like a dream
Of moon and dark barely recalled,
A moment,
Shadows caught in a blink.
Like a quick kiss;
One wishes for more
But it suddenly turns to leave,
Dragging summer away."
It came in the mail from the VFW, just a small square of paper, not even a full page. On one side was printed a painting of a field of red poppies in France. On the other side was printed the poem In Flanders Fields.
On many other days many other pieces of mail, junk mail, had been received and tossed away. There was no value in them to the receiver. But not this piece of mail from the VFW. Its value to the receiver was great.
With a pin it was stuck to the wall above his desk. In this prominent place it could be seen when walking by or sitting down to take care of business.
One day it disappeared from its place on the wall.
Did he notice?
It reappeared as a special gift on Memorial day. The red poppy field painting was now mounted in a wooden frame. Artistically printed below it was his favorite poem In Flanders Fields.
Now the red poppy field, with its accompanying poem, found a new place of prominence. For years the frame of remembrance hung proudly on his living room wall providing a conversation piece for visitors and moments of reflection for him.
In 2007, ownership of this prized possession changed hands. It became mine. In time it will change hands again and be passed to Middle Son.
Middle Son was a partner in framing something of value for a special man who was proud of his country and served it with pride in World War II.
In Flanders Fields By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) Canadian Army
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
How many years has it been since we trekked downtown on Mothers Day, with a few dollars in our hands, to buy the red geraniums? How much did we pay? Were they a dollar for each? Fifty cents?
How long has it been since the old, old man who lived in our town, who had a little greenhouse and raised red geraniums, came to mind? Was he really that old or just seemed so at the time?
How long ago was it that he handed us the clay pots that held the red geraniums in exchange for the dollars that paid for them? How many did we buy? More than one. Two or three? Maybe four?
How many years, days, hours has it been since we carried the red geraniums in their rough clay pots back across the highway that leads up the valley in one direction and to the Big Town in the other? How long since we followed the sidewalk that ran past the grade school proudly carrying home the potted red geraniums.
When years add upon years, remembrance becomes fuzzy, many details a blur. But vivid in memory from those long ago days are rough clay pots on Mothers Day and the scent of red geraniums.
Awake, thou wintry earth – Fling off thy sadness! Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth Your ancient gladness! Thomas Blackburn, "An Easter Hymn"
Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world.
Virgil A. Kraft
That God once loved a garden we learn in Holy writ. And seeing gardens in the Spring I well can credit it. Winifred Mary Letts
In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
Margaret Atwood
And Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast rose from the dreams of its wintry rest. Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant"
If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom,
maybe your soul has never been in bloom.
Terri Guillemets
The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring.
Bern Williams
Yesterday the twig was brown and bare; To-day the glint of green is there; Tomorrow will be leaflets spare; I know no thing so wondrous fair, No miracle so strangely rare. I wonder what will next be there! L.H. Bailey
First a howling blizzard woke us, Then the rain came down to soak us, And now before the eye can focus – Crocus.
Five small ones had already been made from several plaid flannels of different colors found in the fabric stash. Time was passed, during the winter of ’09, putting them together. Flannel was cut, sewed, snipped and washed to remove as many of the tiny threads as possible.
Scraps of flannel, and bits of fuzz covered the floors of the little house at the head of the valley, and snipped threads clung to stockinged feet. Somehow, the remnants of sewing made their way to every room in the house. How did that triangle shaped plaid get to the bathroom? How did that ziggy zaggy piece get to the front porch? No! What is that in the fridge?
By the end of January, after much snipping and numb, sore fingers, everyone in the family had their raggy quilt, with the exception of one. The time for that wouldn’t be found till the end of the year, right before Christmas.
Over several months flannel had been collected in colors that might please a little girl. Little thought was given to how large Little Gal’s raggy quilt would be when the flannel purchases were made. A variety of patterns and colors was the goal.
When the time came to begin cutting the yards of material into blocks, there was much more than needed for one raggy quilt for one little gal.
What to do? What to do? Make two. One to take home, and one to keep in the top bunk at Grandma’s.
More cutting and sewing but much easier snipping (with the purchase of spring tension scissors) and Little Gal found two large boxes containing her very own raggy quilts under the tree on Christmas morning. One raggy quilt (mostly pink) went home, and one raggy quilt (lots of colors) stayed behind at Grandma’s.
Probably the easiest quilt you can make.
How to Make A Rag, Raggy, Raggie or Raggedy Quilt (or Blanket)
Good-bye, kind year, we walk no more together, But here in quiet happiness we part.
Tonight, New Year’s Eve, there will be a full moon –
the second full moon for this December, 2009.
Called a "Blue Moon", if the sky is clear, which it hasn’t been today,
we’ll see how blue it is or isn’t.
Once in a blue moon it does happen.
Another "Blue Moon", the musical variety, turns up more often than once in a blue moon in most performer’s repertoires.
Is there anybody who sings who hasn’t sung "Blue Moon"?
It’s been used in a doo-wop ditty:
and an unusual pairing of Mel Torme and Elvis Presley:
and this skip-a-heartbeat tune by Chris Isaak:
The perfect song For this New Year’s Eve, 2009, has to be "Blue Moon".
A Blue Moon on New Year’s Eve is very rare.
It won’t happen again until 2028.
With any luck at all, by then, I’ll still be around,
but a doddering old lady.
Actually, some say the Blue Moon will bring good luck
to anyone who stands and bathes in its moonbeams.
May your sky be clear, no cloud in view –
May you see the moon, and may it be blue.
Happy New Year from the Valley!
Blue moon You saw me standing alone Without a dream in my heart Without a love of my own
Blue moon You knew just what I was there for You heard me saying a prayer for Someone I really could care for
And then suddenly appeared before me The only one my arms could ever hold I heard somebody whisper ‘please adore me’ But when I looked, that moon had turned to gold
Blue moon Now I’m no longer alone Without a dream in my heart Without a love of my own
CANDY, a confection made with sugar and often flavoring and filling
FUDGE, a soft creamy candy made typically of sugar, milk, butter, and flavoring
Well, in my family, we didn’t call it fudge. It was chocolate candy to us.
Though we weren’t wrong, to be more exact, we should have called it fudge.
I remember one or the other of my two older brothers next to me,
the oldest brothers had been long gone by now, and my memories of them are weak,
I remember one or the other of them sitting on a stool, close to the gas stove,
stirring candy with a metal spoon.
I don’t remember that we had any wooden spoons in our house back then.
Sometimes they would add peanut butter to the mixture when they took it from the stove, sometimes not.
Maybe that depended on whether there was any peanut butter in the house at the time.
They never added nuts. My memory doesn’t hold a place for nuts.
Nuts probably would have been a distraction to them.
Cracking and chopping, that would have taken too much time and effort.
And I doubt that my mother would have had packaged nuts on the shelf.
I don’t remember that they were selfish with the candy they made.
I don’t remember being rationed or not allowed to have any.
If I was allowed to be a glutton, I don’t remember that either. Probably not.
In our house, there were too many hands reaching for a piece for anybody to get too hoggish about it.
When I became of candy making age, I remember stirring it and dropping it from a spoon into cold water (and I remember adding ice to the bowl of water I used) to check for the soft ball stage.
There is no memory of a candy thermometer being in my mother’s kitchen during those years.
This was always the tricky part of candy making for me.
Sometimes I got it just right, and the candy would be creamy and smooth, a wonderful texture and delicious.
But, then, there were other times when I didn’t get it right, and it would either be a sticky, gooey mess or a dry, grainy batch of hard, brown "stuff".
I don’t remember that I ate much of the candy when my culinary effort resulted in failure.
But, my younger brother probably did.
The recipe my family used when we made chocolate candy was on the back of the H**shey cocoa box.
I haven’t made that candy, or even thought about it, for a long, long time until this recipe came my way.
It comes from a guy named Mike.
He calls it "Dirt Farmer Fudge".
But it could just as well be "Mountaineer Fudge" or "Prairie Fudge", or "Seaside Fudge", or "City Fudge"
or any number of other fudge names.
It’s the same or similar to the one my family used.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that just about everybody growing up during the fifties and sixties
in twentith century America
made fudge exactly like it using the recipe on the back of the H**shey cocoa box.
Dirt Farmer Fudge
6 cups sugar 1 1/3 cup H**shey’s cocoa 1/4 teaspoon salt 3 cups milk 2 teaspoons vanilla 1 1/2 cups smooth peanut butter 1 stick butter or margarine 1/2 to 3/4 pound walnuts
1. Mix all of the dry ingredients in a large sauce pan, at least 4 quart.
When you boil the fudge it rises a lot!
2. Pour in the milk and mix it with the dry ingredients.
It won’t mix well until you start to heat it, but mix it the best you can.
3. Place over medium heat and stir constantly until it comes to a bubbly boil.
Once it starts boiling you can stop stirring.
4. While the fudge is boiling grease a 9" by 12" glass dish with butter.
Get the rest of the ingredients ready.
You’ll add them to the fudge as soon as you remove it from the heat.
Layout a hot pad for the hot pan when it comes off the stove.
5. It’s a lot easier if you spoon out the peanut butter onto a small saucer
so when it’s time to add it to the fudge you can just push it off the saucer into the hot fudge.
If you don’t like peanut butter or nuts, just leave them out.
Dirt Farmer Fudge is still kick butt without them!
6. Keep an eye on the boiling fudge and start checking it for consistency.
As it boils it will thicken.
If you under cook it you will have a sticky glob that will never harden.
If you over cook it you might not even get it out of the pan.
Or if you over cook it, it will set up almost immediately when you pour it
which means that it will not be creamy and it will be too dry,
and I’ll be really disappointed in you.
Okay, maybe it won’t be that bad, but you’ll never know how good this fudge is when cooked perfectly.
7. Test the fudge by dropping a small amount into a dish of cold water.
When it is done perfectly it will puddle in the bottom of the dish
and you’ll be able to push it into a small pile with your finger
then you should be able to pick it up between two fingers.
Test the fudge early and often.
If it can’t be picked up, rinse the dish and add fresh cold water and test it again soon.
It takes a while for it to boil down to the perfect consistency,
and there is a fine line between over cooking and under cooking it.
Check if often.
8. As soon as the fudge is done remove the pan from the stove and place it on a hot pad.
Immediately add the butter, the vanilla, the walnuts and the peanut butter.
Do Not Stir it Yet!
9. Just let the fudge cool a bit.
This is a critical and scary time
but you really want it to cool down to about 140 degrees Fahrenheit
which means that you can almost place your hands on the outside of the pan without burning them.
Please be careful, do not stick your finger in the fudge and only put your hands near the outside of the pan.
10. Once the fudge has cooled some, start stirring it.
As you stir it, the fudge will thicken and lose it’s gloss.
Get ready to pour quickly once that happens.
Sometimes you barely get the peanut butter mixed by the time the fudge is ready to pour into the dish.
11. Pour the fudge into the dish and quickly push it into the corners of the dish
then quit smoothing the fudge.
The top will set up quickly,
but if you’ve cooked it perfectly the rest of the fudge will need several hours,
up to 24 hours to really set up completely.
This makes a really moist fudge
so I cut it into small squares and place it in a container or onto a serving tray.
Often times the bottom of the pieces will stay moist
so I lay a paper towel in the bottom of the tray to help wick away some of that excess moisture.
I stack it on the tray with a little space between the pieces so the edges can air dry
but inside the fudge is nice and moist.
When done perfectly, Dirt Farmer Fudge is to die for!
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